John H. Thayer in his interesting article on Saturn in _Popular Astronomy_, March, 1919, says: "If you want to see a picture painted as only the hand of God can paint it, go with me to Saturn." He then beautifully describes the scene of the wonderful band of silvery light which arches the sky near the equator, and the bewildering panorama of many moons, full round disks, quarter phases and thin crescents displayed in the Saturnian nights. Not only would the nights be startling to an earth-being; during the daytime their tiny sun would skim across the sky at the rate of about the distance of the diameter of the moon in every minute, and then after the sun literally dropped below the horizon, the stars and crescents and disks and quarters of moons would shoot across equally fast. Suppose all the inhabitants of the solar system were forced to exist in a medium like the ocean, for instance, to know nothing of such celestial scenes; perhaps the unfortunate inhabitants of Venus can see no more clearly through that dense atmosphere which surrounds their globe. "One might think that the atmosphere was made transparent with this design, to give man in the heavenly bodies, the perpetual presence of the sublime. If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore; and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown! But every night come out these envoys of beauty, and light the universe with their admonishing smile." --_Emerson._ The crowning glory of Saturn, its thin flat ring, is poised above the huge body without in any way touching it. Although this ring appears as a solid piece, it is now known positively that it is made up of swarms of meteors or exceedingly minute satellites, all whirling round and round Saturn in the same plane. It may easily be seen why a brightly swirling mass of these shining moons would seem as one object at such a distance. Through a large telescope it becomes apparent that Saturn's ring is really composed of three rings lying one inside of the other, the two outer rings, which are about 11,000 and 18,000 miles in width, being separated by a dark, narrow clean-cut space of about 2200 miles. The third ring is a thin, faint inner ring, so transparent that the planet may be seen shining through it. It is about the same width as the outer ring, 11,000 miles, and its inner edge lies only 6000 miles above the surface of the planet. This inner ring is called the "crape ring" because it has a dusky look. It is believed to be the inner ring thinning off toward the planet. It has been suggested that the crape ring may have originated from collisions of particles in the bright ring, thus reducing their orbits, and that the rings of Saturn are slowly shrinking down upon the planet and will sometimes in the future have entirely disappeared.